The social media giant said it will not allow users to like, reply, share or retweet tweets from world leaders who break its rules. Instead, it will let users quote-tweet to allow ordinary users to express their opinions. The company said the move will help its users stay informed about global affairs, but while balancing the need to keep the site's rules in check. TechCrunch reports: Twitter has been in a bind, amid allegations that the company has not taken action against world leaders who break its rules. "When it comes to the actions of world leaders on Twitter, we recognize that this is largely new ground and unprecedented," Twitter said in an unbylined blog post on Tuesday. "We want to make it clear today that the accounts of world leaders are not above our policies entirely," the company said. Any user who tweets content promoting terrorism, making "clear and direct" threats of violence, and posting private information are all subject to ban. But Twitter said in cases involving a world leader, "we will err on the side of leaving the content up if there is a clear public interest in doing so." "Our goal is to enforce our rules judiciously and impartially," Twitter added in a tweet. "In doing so, we aim to provide direct insight into our enforcement decision-making, to serve public conversation, and protect the public's right to hear from their leaders and to hold them to account."

TechCrunch's Josh Constine argues Facebook, along with the other social networks, should flat out refuse to run campaign advertisements. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt: Permitting falsehood in political advertising would work if we had a model democracy, but we don't. Not only are candidates dishonest, but voters aren't educated, and the media isn't objective. And now, hyperlinks turn lies into donations and donations into louder lies. The checks don't balance. What we face is a self-reinforcing disinformation dystopia. That's why if Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube don't want to be the arbiters of truth in campaign ads, they should stop selling them. If they can't be distributed safely, they shouldn't be distributed at all. No one wants historically untrustworthy social networks becoming the honesty police, deciding what's factual enough to fly. But the alternative of allowing deception to run rampant is unacceptable. Until voter-elected officials can implement reasonable policies to preserve truth in campaign ads, the tech giants should go a step further and refuse to run them. Facebook recently formalized its policy of allowing politicians to lie in ads and not be forced to verify their claims with third-party fact-checkers. In response to the policy, Elizabeth Warren decided to run ads claiming Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg endorses Trump because it's allowing his campaign lies.

In a statement responding to Warren's ad, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said the company believes political speech should be protected. "If Senator Warren wants to say things she knows to be untrue, we believe Facebook should not be in the position of censoring that speech," the Stone said.

"A fresh series of Facebook ads this week by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren seeks to put the social media giant on the defensive -- by telling a lie," writes CNN.

An anonymous reader quotes their report: The ads, which began running widely on Thursday, start with a bold but obvious falsehood: That Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have endorsed President Trump's reelection campaign.

"You're probably shocked," reads the ad, which has already reached tens of thousands of viewers nationwide. "And you might be thinking, 'how could this possibly be true?' Well, it's not."

The ad's own admission of a lie seeks to draw attention to a controversial Facebook policy Warren has spent days criticizing. Under the policy, Facebook exempts ads by politicians from third-party fact-checking... In a statement Friday responding to Warren's ad, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said the company believes political speech should be protected. "If Senator Warren wants to say things she knows to be untrue, we believe Facebook should not be in the position of censoring that speech," the Stone said...

Warren has become one of Facebook's key antagonists after first calling for it and other Silicon Valley giants -- such as Amazon, Google and Apple -- to be broken up. But her rift with Facebook deepened after leaked audio published by The Verge revealed Zuckerberg fretting about the potential consequences of a Warren presidency. "If she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge," Zuckerberg is heard saying at a companywide meeting. "And does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don't want to have a major lawsuit against our own government. ... But look, at the end of the day, if someone's going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight."

Warren responded via Twitter, "What would really 'suck' is if we don't fix a corrupt system that lets giant companies like Facebook engage in illegal anticompetitive practices, stomp on consumer privacy rights, and repeatedly fumble their responsibility to protect our democracy."

jimminy_cricket writes: Due to the ban placed on a Hearthstone player for supporting Hong Kong protestors, Blizzard is now receiving criticism from U.S. senators. "Blizzard shows it is willing to humiliate itself to please the Chinese Communist Party," Sen. Ron Wyden said, according to The Verge. "No American company should censor calls for freedom to make a quick buck." "Recognize what's happening here. People who don't live in China must either self censor or face dismissal & suspensions," Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said in a tweet on Tuesday. "China using access to market as leverage to crush free speech globally. Implications of this will be felt long after everyone in U.S. politics today is gone."

An anonymous reader shares a report: An Iowa man is so bothered by the political climate that his psychologist says he asked for a higher dosage of his anxiety medication. A Chicago woman is so uneasy about politics that she has needed two dental implants to deal with her teeth-grinding habit. And a New York woman says she suffered her first flare-up of multiple sclerosis in 10 years due to political angst. Americans are stressed and politics is a major cause, according to psychologists, psychiatrists and recent surveys.

A study published in September in the journal PLOS One found that politics is a source of stress for 38% of Americans. "The major takeaway from this is that if our numbers are really anywhere in the ballpark, there are tens of millions of Americans who see politics as exacting a toll on their social, psychological, emotional and even physical health," says Kevin Smith, lead author of the study and chair of the political science department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

In a letter to Joe Biden's presidential campaign, Facebook doubled down on its policy to allow speech from politicians to go unchecked regardless of the truthfulness of their claims. From a report: The letter was a response to the Biden campaign's request for Facebook to reject or demote ads from President Donald Trump's re-election campaign that contain false claims. The Biden campaign's original request to Facebook, addressed to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg and global elections policy chief Katie Harbath, pointed to an ad by the Trump campaign that contains a statement that has not been proven by evidence that the former vice president "offered Ukraine $1 billion to fire the prosecutor investigating a company affiliated with his son." The Biden campaign wrote: "The allegation of corrupt motive has been demonstrated to be completely false." The campaign said the claim should be covered by Facebook's pledge to reject political ads with "previously debunked content."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: California has passed a law meant to prevent altered "deepfake" videos from influencing elections, in a plan that has raised free speech concerns. Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law AB 730, which makes it a crime to distribute audio or video that gives a false, damaging impression of a politician's words or actions. The law applies to any candidate within 60 days of an election, but includes some exceptions. News media will be exempt from the requirement, as will videos made for satire or parody. Potentially deceptive video or audio will also be allowed if it includes a disclaimer noting that it's fake. The law will sunset in 2023. The report notes that Newsom also signed a law that would ban pornographic deepfakes made without consent.

A bipartisan panel of U.S. senators Tuesday called for sweeping action by Congress, the White House and Silicon Valley to ensure social media sites aren't used to interfere in the coming presidential election, delivering a sobering assessment about the weaknesses that Russian operatives exploited in the 2016 campaign. From a report: The Senate Intelligence Committee, a Republican-led panel that has been investigating foreign electoral interference for more than two and a half years, said in blunt language that Russians worked to damage Democrat Hillary Clinton while bolstering Republican Donald Trump -- and made clear that fresh rounds of interference are likely ahead of the 2020 vote. "Russia is waging an information warfare campaign against the U.S. that didn't start and didn't end with the 2016 election," said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the committee's chairman. "Their goal is broader: to sow societal discord and erode public confidence in the machinery of government. By flooding social media with false reports, conspiracy theories, and trolls, and by exploiting existing divisions, Russia is trying to breed distrust of our democratic institutions and our fellow Americans." Though the 85-page report itself had extensive redactions, in the visible sections lawmakers urged their peers in Congress to act, including through the potential adoption of new regulations that would make who bought an ad more transparent. The report also called on the White House and the executive branch to adopt a more forceful, public role, warning Americans about the ways in which dangerous misinformation can spread while creating new teams within the U.S. government to monitor for threats and share intelligence with industry.

Microsoft disclosed today that Iranian state-sponsored hackers tried to hack into email accounts belonging to current and former US government officials, and members of a 2020 US presidential campaign. From a report: The attacks have taken place "in a 30-day period between August and September," Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President, Customer Security & Trust at Microsoft, said today. Microsoft's Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) linked the attacks to a group the company calls Phosphorous (other names are APT35, Charming Kitten, and the Ajax Security Team). The group has been linked to Iran's government in reports from multiple cyber-security vendors. Burt said the group operated in different stages. It first made more than 2,700 probes to identify consumer email accounts belonging to specific Microsoft customers. Once the group had a list of high-value targets, it went after 241 of those accounts, which included "accounts are associated with a U.S. presidential campaign, current and former US government officials, journalists covering global politics and prominent Iranians living outside Iran."

The FBI is investigating after someone allegedly tried to hack into West Virginia's mobile voting app during the 2018 midterm elections. From a report: One or more people allegedly attempted to hack into Voatz, an experimental app that lets voters who are active military or registered to vote abroad cast their votes from their phones, Mike Stuart, the US attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, announced Tuesday. Stuart said in a statement that "there was no intrusion and the integrity of votes and the election system was not compromised," but that an investigation had begun, was "ongoing and no legal conclusions whatsoever have been made regarding the conduct of the activity or whether any federal laws were violated." West Virginia is the only state that currently allows for the system, though it's been used and is being considered in several cities and counties across the country.

"We just noticed a certain group of people from a certain part of the country tried to access the system. We stopped them, caught them and reported them to the authorities," Voatz co-founder and CEO Nimit Sawhney told CNN. "Somebody downloaded, registered and then tried to tamper with it, do something. We caught unauthorized activity, and they immediately got stopped," Sawhney said. He said he did not think the culprit was a sophisticated nation-state hacker looking to disrupt the election. Because Sawhney caught the activity last October, and elections are considered critical infrastructure, he felt he needed to report the incident to the FBI.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The voting machines that the U.S. will use in the 2020 election are still vulnerable to hacks. A group of ethical hackers tested a bunch of those voting machines and election systems (most of which they bought on eBay). They were able to crack into every machine, The Washington Post reports. Their tests took place this summer at a Def Con cybersecurity conference, but the group visited Washington to share their findings yesterday. A number of flaws allowed the hackers to access the machines, including weak default passwords and shoddy encryption. The group says the machines could be hacked by anyone with access to them, and if poll workers make mistakes or take shortcuts, the machines could be infiltrated by remote hackers.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Friday proposed reinstating a congressional office dedicated to improving tech expertise in order to beat back the growing power of technology companies' lobbying efforts. From a report: In a plan posted to her website, Warren -- one of the top Democratic presidential contenders -- said she wants to bring back the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), which was set up in the 1970s and dissolved in 1995 under former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). Congress stood up the OTA to deliver technology expertise to staffers and lawmakers, who often struggle to keep abreast with the latest developments in an advanced and complex industry. Since the OTA was defunded, the country's top tech companies, including Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook, have invested millions in lobbying efforts, filling the knowledge gap, Warren said, with the message, "Trust us because we understand it and you don't." "Members of Congress should have the resources they need to make decisions without relying on corporate lobbyists," Warren said. There's been a recent spike in interest around the OTA, with lawmakers in the House and Senate proposing legislation that would reinstate the tech office to help lawmakers navigate the pressing regulatory concerns around Big Tech.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said this week that content by politicians would stay up on the video-sharing website even if it violates the company's standards, echoing a position staked out by Facebook this week. From a report: "When you have a political officer that is making information that is really important for their constituents to see, or for other global leaders to see, that is content that we would leave up because we think it's important for other people to see," Wojcicki told an audience at The Atlantic Festival this morning. Wojcicki said the news media is likely to cover controversial content regardless of whether it's taken down, giving context to understand it. YouTube is owned by Google. A YouTube spokesperson later told POLITICO that politicians are not treated differently than other users and must abide by its community guidelines. The company grants exemptions to some political speech if the company considers it to be educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic in nature.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Facebook this week finally put into writing what users -- especially politically powerful users -- have known for years: its community "standards" do not, in fact, apply across the whole community. Speech from politicians is officially exempt from the platform's fact checking and decency standards, the company has clarified, with a few exceptions. Facebook communications VP Nick Clegg, himself a former member of the UK Parliament, outlined the policy in a speech and company blog post Tuesday. Facebook has had a "newsworthiness exemption" to its content guidelines since 2016. That policy was formalized in late October of that year amid a contentious and chaotic US political season and three weeks before the presidential election that would land Donald Trump the White House.

Facebook at the time was uncertain how to handle posts from the Trump campaign, The Wall Street Journal reported. Sources told the paper that Facebook employees were sharply divided over the candidate's rhetoric about Muslim immigrants and his stated desire for a Muslim travel ban, which several felt were in violation of the service's hate speech standards. Eventually, the sources said, CEO Mark Zuckerberg weighed in directly and said it would be inappropriate to intervene. Months later, Facebook finally issued its policy. "We're going to begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest -- even if they might otherwise violate our standards," Facebook wrote at the time. Facebook by default "will treat speech from politicians as newsworthy content that should, as a general rule, be seen and heard." It won't be subject to fact-checking because the company does not believe that it is appropriate for it to "referee political debates" or prevent a politician's speech from both reaching its intended audience and "being subject to public debate and scrutiny."

Newsworthiness, Clegg added, will be determined by weighing the "public interest value of the piece of speech" against the risk of harm. The exception to all of this is advertising. "Standards are different for content for which the company receives payment, so if someone -- even a politician or political candidate -- posts ads to Facebook, those ads in theory must still meet both the community standards and Facebook's advertising policies," reports Ars.

The White House released a transcript that showed President Trump urged Ukraine's leader to contact Attorney General William Barr about opening an inquiry tied to Joseph R. Biden Jr. Two intelligence officials referred Mr. Trump's activity to the Justice Dept. for a possible criminal inquiry. It declined to open one. The New York Times: President Trump released the transcript on Wednesday of a July 25 call he had with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, in which he encouraged his Ukrainian counterpart to contact Attorney General William P. Barr about investigating a political rival. Mr. Trump has defiantly denied saying anything inappropriate on the call, but the transcript shows he clearly referred by name to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, and encouraged Mr. Zelensky to reach out to Mr. Barr. Before the release, he declared on Twitter that Democrats had fallen into his trap, and that the release of the transcript would exonerate him -- and make them look foolish.

The transcript's release and content ensured a day of intense scrutiny. Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, marveled that the attorney general has now been pulled in. Republicans stuck to their position that Mr. Trump did not offer Mr. Zelensky any inducements nor did he threaten him, so his demand for a Biden inquiry was not improper. "From a quid pro quo aspect, there's nothing there," said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. The release did not go far enough for many Democrats, who have demanded to see the full complaint about Mr. Trump's actions lodged by a whistle-blower, which has not been shared with Congress. On Tuesday, Nancy Pelosi announced formal Trump impeachment inquiry. From a report: "Today, I'm announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. I'm directing our 6 committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella ... The president must be held accountable," she said.

On Thursday, you'll be able to make campaign donations to 2020 presidential candidates through your Amazon Alexa devices -- or at least to those candidates whom Amazon deems eligible to set up an account. From a report: If a campaign chooses to sign up for Alexa donations, you'll be able to donate to it by merely saying, "Alexa, I want to make a political contribution," or "Alexa, donate [amount] to [candidate name]." All donations will be processed through Amazon Pay, and users will receive email receipts for their contributions as well. Strangely, the feature is only available to 2020 presidential candidates Amazon defines as "principal campaign committees." It's not apparent who Amazon considers "principal" and for what reasons. The contribution will be limited between $5 to $200.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The Trump administration is expected on Wednesday to formally revoke California's legal authority to set tailpipe pollution rules that are stricter than federal rules, in a move designed by the White House to strike twin blows against both the liberal-leaning state that President Trump has long antagonized and the environmental legacy of President Barack Obama. The announcement that the White House will revoke one of California's signature environmental policies will come while Mr. Trump is traveling in the state, where he is scheduled to attend fund-raisers in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. The formal revocation of California's authority to set its own rules on tailpipe pollution -- the United States' largest source of greenhouse emissions -- will be announced Wednesday afternoon at a private event at the Washington headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The move has been widely expected since last summer, when the Trump administration unveiled its draft plan to roll back the strict federal fuel economy standards put in place by the Obama administration. That draft Trump rule also included a plan to revoke a legal waiver, granted to the state of California under the 1970 Clean Air Act, allowing it to set tougher state-level standards than those put forth by the federal government. The revocation of the waiver would also affect 13 other states that follow California's clean air rules. In recent months, the administration's broader weakening of nationwide auto-emissions standards has become plagued with delays as staff members struggled to prepare adequate legal, technical or scientific justifications for the move. As a result, the White House decided to proceed with just one piece of its overall plan -- the move to strip California of its legal authority to set tougher standards -- while delaying the release of its broader rollback, according to these people. The plan comes less than a week after the Trump administration rescinded an Obama-era policy that expanded federal oversight and the threat of steep fines for polluting the country's smaller waterways.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: President Trump's administration has rescinded an Obama-era policy that expanded federal oversight and the threat of steep fines for polluting the country's smaller waterways (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), furthering his deregulatory efforts in the 14 months that remain before the next election. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Thursday signed a final rule that limits the scope of federal clean-water regulations in an effort to clear up confusion for landowners whose property sits near water sources that feed into the country's network of major rivers. The Obama administration in 2015 had expanded federal oversight upstream, it said, to better protect wildlife and the country's drinking-water supply from industrial runoff and pollution.

Mr. Wheeler called that expansion an overreach, saying it grew to cover dry land in some cases. Farmers, property developers, chemical manufacturers and oil-and-gas producers -- some of whom are key voter groups for the 2020 election -- have voiced opposition to it, with many saying it overreached by intruding on property owners' rights. Court battles following the Obama-era rule have led to fractured rules across the country. Amid the legal challenges, the regulation is in place only in 22 states, though the Trump administration's decision could spark its own series of court fights. Thursday's rule "restores regulatory text that existed before the 2015," the report notes. "Property that is no longer covered by the 1972 Clean Water Act remains protected by state rules. Major waterways, such as most rivers and lakes, were already under protection of the Clean Water Act and still will be after the rollback."

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang announced at Thursday's primary debate that his campaign will use funds raised from his supporters for a pilot program meant to resemble his universal basic income proposal. The Hill reports: Under the Freedom Dividend Pilot Program, at least 10 American families will receive $1,000 a month, or $12,000 a year. Participants can enter the giveaway on Yang's campaign website. Three people are already receiving the dividend, and his campaign said in a news release that they are "already noting the benefits of having an extra $1,000 per month -- from being able to make home improvements, to fixing a car needed for work, to affording medical care for family members." "The campaign is excited to work together with our supporters to help create more stories about what the Freedom Dividend means for American families. It will enable and empower citizens to pay their bills, switch jobs, take care of loved ones, and plan for the future," campaign manager Zach Graumann said in the Thursday night release.

Longtime Slashdot reader cccc828 shares a report from The Economist, which poses the question: Is Microsoft a digital nation and does it have a secretary of state? "The answer of Brad Smith, the software giant's top lawyer, is, well, diplomatic," the report says. "Nation states are run by governments and firms need to be accountable to them, he says. But yes, he admits, he worries a lot about geopolitics these days." Here's an excerpt from the report: Mr Smith presides over an operation comparable in size to the foreign office of a mid-sized country. Its 1,500 employees work in departments like "Law Enforcement and National Security" or "Digital Diplomacy Group." It has outposts in 56 countries, sending regular cables to headquarters in Redmond, near Seattle. Mr Smith is as itinerant as a foreign minister. In one year he visited 22 countries and met representatives of 40 governments. [...] Mr Smith says a coherent corporate foreign policy is simply good business: it creates trust, which attracts customers. His doctrine indeed sits well with Microsoft's business model, based on sales of services and software. It can afford to be more of a purist on privacy and the spread of disinformation, the most politically contentious tech issues of the day, than giants whose profits come from targeted advertising on social networks. Acknowledging Microsoft's mixed record in the past, the article concludes: A dose of hypocrisy is perhaps inevitable in an organization the size of Microsoft. Critics level a more fundamental charge against its foreign policy, however. Where, they ask, does it -- and fellow tech giants -- derive the legitimacy to be independent actors on the international stage? This is the wrong question to pose. As businesses, they have every right to defend the interests of shareholders, employees and customers. As global ones, their priorities may differ from those of their home country's elected officials. And as entities which control much of the world's digital infrastructure, they should have a say in designing the international norms which govern it. At a time when many governments refuse to lead, why should the firms not be allowed to? Especially if, like Microsoft's, their efforts blend principles with pragmatism. How does your company deal with the ever more complex realities of world politics?